Poe was a master of writing stories of horror and revenge,
and as a "Dark Romantic" the focus of so much of his work is the dark side of humanity -
the capacity of us all to commit heinous acts. What is key to note about his work is how
he uses masterfully the first person narrator to reveal deeply disturbed psyches and
characters who often are unreliable narrators - in that we as readers can see that often
there is more going on in their account than their words at first
indicate.
This short story is of no exception - consider
how it begins:
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as
best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed
revenge.
As the story
progresses and we see in particular the friendly way in which Fortunato responds to the
narrator, we begin to doubt the veracity of the narrator's comments - would Fortunato
really entrust himself if he had insulted the narrator?
As
the story moves both its characters and us as readers to the labyrinthine catacombs and
underground darkness of Italy, we come to realise that we are being exposed to the
darkness, or the "underground" emotions and feelings of the narrator. The setting
therefore is a wholly appropriate place for the narrator to gain his terrible revenge -
sealing a man into a room and leaving him to die a slow and terrible death. As we
venture down into the catacombs, we go on a journey into the darkness and horror of the
narrator's innermost desires, and thus we are shocked and terrified just as Fortunato is
by what is revealed. Consider the following passage:
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the
remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of
the bells. My heart grew sick - on account of the dampness of the
catacombs.
The way in which
the narrator describes the completion of his task in such a matter-of-fact way makes his
actions all the more chilling, as does his disavowal that the "sickness" of his heart
had anything to do with his act.
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